Metropol

I don't think I've ever been in a Staples store. In fact, other than the one at Staples Corner (which is named for a different business called Staples), I'm not sure I've seen one.

In my old job I did a fair bit of ordering from their catalogue, though - they took over Corporate Express, and it was always quite pleasing to be able to order Staples staples.

They were planning a merger with Office Depot in the US which got nixed by the competition authorities.

Over here on the B2B catalogue side there has been a fair reduction of companies, with Supplies Team being bought by Banner and Viking being bought by Office Depot.

EDIT - So apparently Viking has been an Office Depot subsidiary since 1998. I think what's happened recently (which threw me) is a bit of an own brand rationalisation with Office Depot products replacing some of the Viking stock in the catalogue.

When Office Depot took over Viking back in 1998, they also gained the rights to Ian/Irwin Helford's name and likeness for use in perpetuity.

http://multichannelmerchant.com/news/vi ... -01091999/#_

American Apparel's UK business has gone into administration, and its US parent has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The standard 'store closing' posters (which have been seen everywhere from Borders to Woolworths to BHS) look quite incongruous against the everything-in-Helvetica-Bold aesthetic:

Where do they get those store closing signs from? Who makes them?

It's not just companies going bust either, our local B&Q had those signs when they closed earlier this year as well.

gottago wrote:Where do they get those store closing signs from? Who makes them?

As they're very generic, ordered in bulk at some point by an administrator?

There's not a warehouse somewhere with a job lot of posters. They are generally printed for each administration.

A friend was working in the marketing department of Peacocks when they went under and the company rebelled against using the design as they felt it undermined their determination to keep the business trading - the posters being widely associated with the closure of Woolworths at the time. The administrators allowed them to produce their own design but there were strict guidelines in terms of the wording that had to be used - and they had to be bright and bold.

This is what they used:



The reason for this? An administrator has a responsibility to get the best value for creditors and it is possible that later on down the line someone could claim they didn't do it adequately. Having an industry standard design makes it difficult to argue that they didn't market the closing down sale well enough. It could also be considered a waste of money paying to have unique posters designed (Peacocks kept its marketing department during the administration so were able to design it in house).

Whataday wrote:There's not a warehouse somewhere with a job lot of posters. They are generally printed for each administration.

Yes, having thought about it after posting it, it's not as if they're not going to be printed in bulk anyway for each time they're required.

thegeek wrote:American Apparel's UK business has gone into administration, and its US parent has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The standard 'store closing' posters (which have been seen everywhere from Borders to Woolworths to BHS) look quite incongruous against the everything-in-Helvetica-Bold aesthetic:

Looks like the Ame fell off the sign at some point!

Whataday wrote:There's not a warehouse somewhere with a job lot of posters. They are generally printed for each administration.

A friend was working in the marketing department of Peacocks when they went under and the company rebelled against using the design as they felt it undermined their determination to keep the business trading - the posters being widely associated with the closure of Woolworths at the time. The administrators allowed them to produce their own design but there were strict guidelines in terms of the wording that had to be used - and they had to be bright and bold.

This is what they used:



The reason for this? An administrator has a responsibility to get the best value for creditors and it is possible that later on down the line someone could claim they didn't do it adequately. Having an industry standard design makes it difficult to argue that they didn't market the closing down sale well enough. It could also be considered a waste of money paying to have unique posters designed (Peacocks kept its marketing department during the administration so were able to design it in house).

That's right and to be fair, we didn't use that POS for long, with in about a week we used the in house green 20% off POS instead, as we never went into a closing down sale etc, just 20% off Full Price and the sale was up to 70% as always.